It's no secret that Donald Trump is getting walloped in the polls by Joe Biden. It doesn't matter whether you're looking at national polling, battleground surveys, or breaking out demographic groups—Trump has nowhere to turn for good news.
But some of the anecdotal accounts from voters in last week's New York Times/Siena poll stunner giving Biden a commanding 14-point lead were simply priceless.
Like the 75-year-old woman from Denver who said she stuck by Richard Nixon until the bitter end, but just can't stomach Trump:
Ms. Myles said that when Mr. Trump was first elected, she had resolved to “give him a chance,” but had since concluded that he and his party were irredeemable.
“I was one of those people who stuck by Nixon until he was waving goodbye,” Ms. Myles said. “I thought I was a good Republican and thought they had my values, but they have gone down the tubes these last few years.”
Myles plans to vote for Biden this year because Trump's just that much worse than Nixon. And actually, she's not wrong.
Then there are voters like 72-year-old Harry Hoyt, who has sometimes cast ballots for GOP presidential candidates. But Trump? No effing way. Hoyt voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but wasn't wild about it. Now, he's pretty happy.
“Biden would be a better candidate than Trump, simply because he’s a nice person,” Mr. Hoyt said. “One of the most important things to me is the character of the man in charge of our country.”
But even among the voters who said they still plan to vote for Trump, it was tough sledding. Fort Worth Texan Tom Diamond, 31, said Biden seems "like a guy you can trust" but Trump's policies are still more in line with his own. So he's voting Trump even after calling him a "poor leader."
“Part of you just feels icky voting for him,” Mr. Diamond said.
And then there's 37-year-old Lindsay Clark of Salt Lake City, who voted third party in '16 and is probably voting Trump in November. But honest to goodness, Clark couldn't come up with a single nice thing to say about him.
“I was just trying to think if I could think of something off the top of my head that I was like, ‘Yes, I loved when you did that!’” she said of Mr. Trump. “And I kind of just can’t.”
When you lose a Nixon bitter-ender and maybe (?) win the vote of someone who can't find one redeeming quality in you, the outlook isn't exactly bright.